Blast from the past: Catching up with Kelly Kisio, an original Shark with a few good memories of the bad old days

CALGARY – Before heading to the morning skate, a quick hit of Sharks nostalgia.

Had a free night in Calgary and a WHL game between the Calgary Hitmen and the Edmonton Oil Kings only a 15-minute walk away, so decided to watch a little junior hockey for the first time in about nine years.

Once I got there, realized there was a San Jose connection. Kelly Kisio, who played 116 games with the Sharks their first two seasons and was their leading scorer with 78 points in 1992-93, is the president of hockey operations for the Hitmen these days.

Between the second and third periods of Calgary’s 6-2 win we talked about the NHL’s early days in San Jose, or, actually, Daly City as Kisio was gone before the team moved from the Cow Palace to San Jose Arena.

“It was refreshing and new. People were excited,” Kisio said. “They wanted us to win, but they understood when we lost.”

He remembers when the team played an exhibition game in northern Quebec during its first season, and how people showed up there wearing the teal colors of the new franchise.

“I thought, ‘What’s going on?’ That was quite the phenomenon how it took off – all the teal and the shark fin,” Kisio said.

I told him that the first road game I covered was his second season. The Sharks had lost 17 games in a row, tying the NHL record. They seemed destined to break it and hold the NHL mark for futility on a cold February night in Winnipeg and the Merc decided to send a second writer for the occasion. Ultimately, they decided to send me as I was writing a “Fan In The Stands” column at the time.

The Sharks didn’t exactly co-operate, beating Winnipeg 3-2 so I wasn’t there for a historic new record. Still, made for a good story.

“It was like we had won the Stanley Cup there,” Kisio remembered. “Boy, that was a weight off our shoulders.”

As ugly as it was in the standings, Kisio credited the Sharks coaching staff of keeping things bearable.

“It was some tough nights,” Kisio said. “George Kingston and Bob Murdoch and those guys were good to us and they knew exactly what they had. They had a bunch of castoffs and some young players. We did our best but obviously it wasn’t very good.”

One of those coaches, of course, was Drew Remenda.

“He was video at the time,” Kisio said of the Sharks future TV color analyst. “Drew was a great guy. A perfect guy for that job. He was upbeat all the time, a funny guy and he worked hard.”

Remenda holds court in Edmonton these days. Maybe a little Sharks nostalgia of the more recent variety on the next stop of this trip.

****Morning skate in two hours. Look for online updates after that at mercurynews.com/sharks.

David Pollak

David Pollak has been following the NHL forever and at the Mercury News as an editor or reporter since 1987. For almost a decade he wrote about the Sharks as the paper's Fan in the Stands before joining the sports department in 2001. He became the Sharks beat writer before the 2007-08 season and began this blog at that time. You can also follow him on Twitter at @PollakOnSharks.